


The Eye

by LucyS Malfoy (Willibald)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-19
Updated: 2013-09-19
Packaged: 2017-12-27 01:45:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/972849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Willibald/pseuds/LucyS%20Malfoy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They say 'walls have ears' but sometimes they have other organs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Eye

**Author's Note:**

> Not my characters, just playing.

It was often said that walls have ears. That might not be true literally (unless some wizard had put them there) but in some cases they had... perceptions. Where large amounts of magic were used in a place some of it seeped into the stone, bricks, the very fabric of the building and if enough was absorbed it started to become aware. A true genius locus if you like.

The classic example, of course, was Hogwarts and the Room of Requirement in particular. Nobody knew who had built it nor when. It certainly wasn't constructed by the founders and rumours of its existence didn't start being recorded until the late 1400s. Although people could have stumbled upon it before then and not realised. It was almost as if the castle had created the place itself as somewhere that it could interact directly with its residents.

What was almost completely unrealised by the witches and wizards who worked there, was that a couple of centuries worth of concentrated magical residue, often from some of the strongest practitioners in the land, had bound to the walls of the Ministry of Magic. The building had become sentient sometime in the 1920s.

 

The Corridor that housed the offices of the Muggle-Born Registration Commission had experienced many changes since it had awakened along with the rest of the building. Recently it had been widened by wizards and filled with desks and storage cupboards and a nice, cosy warm carpet. Then, to its amazement, it could see. Real sight, real colours. Someone had fixed a magical Eye to one of its doors. It was a simple thing, not even properly self-aware, but what it saw the door saw and so did the Corridor.

By day the office bustled with witches and wizards quietly working, fearful of the gaze of the Eye. Some it came to recognise. There was the old wizard who kept an ever refilling bag of mint humbugs in his desk drawer, the young witch who seemed to spend more time trying to catch the attention of the young man sat a desk two rows behind hers than in doing her own work. Then there was the Pink Witch. The one who liked to lurk behind the door with the Eye. The one who caused the others to cringe down and find an overpowering interest in their work whenever she walked through.

Each evening the humans would go wherever they went. Elves would appear and clean then the lights and windows would grow dark and the Eye slept.

This morning, just after the office had filled with workers and the Pink Witch had left with an armful of papers, the Corridor felt a strangeness within its walls. The Eye was dozing, as it often did when the Pink Witch was not there to order it about, so the Corridor gently woke it. It blinked alert and scanned the room but there was nothing out of the ordinary. It blinked again and the workers began to glow to varying degrees as did some of their possessions and the locks on several of the cupboards. It blinked a third time and there it was.

It was a large man in a long coat. He limped as if one of his legs was stiffened up. And in the Eye's sight he glowed an eerie white. None of the wizards and witches showed any indication that he was there at all as he trudged slowly, painfully towards the door with the Eye.

Fascinating.

The Corridor asked the Library. Not a man then but the remembrance of a man, ectoplasm, ghost.

The ghost stopped before the door allowing the Eye to see his face. Rugged, scarred, one socket was dark and ruined, the other quick and determined. It reached a hand towards the Eye and the Corridor saw every scar and blemish on those fingers as they closed about it.

Panic. The Eye's vision was starting to fill with a white glow like the ghost's. It searched around for some escape, left, right, up to the ceiling...

Then blackness.

The Corridor knew that the ghost was still there. Felt him turn back along its length and walk out of the office. When he got to the last row of desks it felt him touch his bare wall, cold, not really there.

"Thank you for caring for it"

Then he was gone.


End file.
